Wither Wristwatches?
A bit more than a year back, my last digital wristwatch went kablooie, and I never replaced it. Sometimes, in my classes, if I need to time something, I’ll ask around for anyone with a wristwatch. And because of this, I haver noticed that almost none of my students wear watches. This seemed quite odd to me, until I realized that probably it was because they all have digital cell phones now that display the time in large numbers on the LCD screen on the outside of the phone–this serves the same purpose for most people, so why buy and wear a watch anymore?
Of course, the decline in wristwatch wearers might also have something to do with the fact that said watches nowadays tend to be the size of small aircraft carriers. I mean, seriously, when you wear one of those behemoths, can you even get your hand into your pants pocket? Since when did it become trendy to wear something on your wrist that couldn’t possibly fit under your cuffs unless you unbutton them? This is the reason I don’t wear one any more–I actually went shopping for one when mine broke down, but wasn’t able to find one that had the features I wanted (stopwatch, countdown, multiple alarms) without also being bigger than my wrist after playing handball for ten hours straight.
At least my class problems are solved by the iChrono widget, which gives me a handy stopwatch to time my students’ PowerPoint presentation projects.
Most girls love expensive shoes, I love expensive watches. I only buy and wear Storm brand. The first one (Mini Desert Laser) I bought over 10 years ago and it’s still working great today. I had the band replaced four years ago because of excessive wear but other than that I have to say its taken more licks than a Timex and still ticks.
I have also the Filter and Sonix styles. Filter is my favorite because I do a lot of hands-on work and the sliding cover plate protects the crystal from getting scratched. It also attracts strange people to my wrist – I’ve had everyone from store clerks to people in bars wanting to know how my watch works and then ask “can I try?”
I personally love the heavier weight of the stainless steel bands and the absence of numbers on the face. That way no one will take my watches 😉
I’m a windows person and have not worked with widgets. I did look through the list of widgets at your link, and asked myself, “how could this be done on a windows box?”. It seems most would be done with a listing in the Favorites menu of the web browser (e.g. to a train schedule website), or the clock in the lower right corner to the desktop (part of the windows os), or radio software (which exists).
Therefore, in your view, what are the advantages of widgets over the regular windows xp stuff?
YouKnowWho:
Simple: A matter of convenience. First of all, all of the things you mention as being on XP are also on the Mac, so it’s not a question of X vs. XP.
It is, rather, a matter of what can save you time and effort. You say that you have the clock in XP. Fine. Of course, you can note the starting time and the ending time of a presentation, then calculate the difference. But then, you can do so with any clock. So: why does anyone have a stopwatch at all? Answer: because it’s easier to start from zero to the ending time than it is to note two random times and then calculate the difference between them.
Some of the widgets are, of course, not any more convenient than conventional means, and I do not endorse them. But some of them save time and effort. The weather widgets mean that I don’t have to look up the weather site or even search for the bookmark–I just press a key and boom, there’s the weather. Could it be done another way? Sure, but I like the widget better. For other things, maybe I don’t. But it’s a nice, quick and easy way for stuff that might otherwise take a lot longer, require more steps, more clicks, and so on. You mention a train schedule on a web site. Well, why not just call up the train station and ask? Answer: because it’s a bit easier to look at your web site. Same principle.
It’s not the end-all-be-all of computing, but it’s one more convenience. And when it comes down to it, that’s what computers provide for most people.